aninra

Delicious tomatmad - a summer delicacy not to be ignored!

Tomatmad is super delicious. Juicy and full of summer flavour. I think enjoying a tomatmad on your balcony with an ice cold øl is a very cool thing to do.

I know, I know. It doesn't sound that cool - in fact, to some it may even sound boring (shock and aghast!). "At least add some bacon," the skeptics say! Well I think they are totally wrong! Tomato, buttered Danish rye bread, mayo and chives, is about as yummy as any quick and easy lunch can get. You probably don't believe me, so I sought out an independent, unbiased opinion and asked a pretty Belgian woman to give me her opinion as she was enjoying a tomatmad with thickly sliced beefeater tomatoes, loads of fresh pepper and a bit of salt. She said: "Yum!" and went back to scarfing down her smørrebrød. I'm not making this up...

Yes, you need good ingredients - fresh summery tomatoes being vital as they are the tomat in tomatmad. So this smørrebrød should really only be eaten in the summer when local tomatoes are fresh, plump and at their best, the chives are plentiful, anf the rugbrød is chewy chewy good. And mayonnaise should be homemade if possible.

Availability of ingredients aside, tomatmad is to very easy to make - as easy as striking a match perhaps - though no cooking is requred. Therefore the Danish Degree of Difficulty is a Tordenskjold Easy. "And who is Tordenskjold," you ask?

Tordenskjold matches - as Danish as apple pie is American

Peter Jansen Wessel Tordenskiold (1691 – 1720) was quite possibly Denmark's most famous naval hero. No doubt because of his badass-ness, as maybe a bit because of the similarity to his last real last name, he was known far and wide as Tordenskjold, or Thunder Shield in Danish, indeed a cool name! Though he is well known for his victory over the Swedes in the battle of Dynekilen, today he is most definitely best known as the face of Danish matchsticks. A strange honour, to be sure, but he is certainly a household name all over Denmark. Learn more about the exploits of Tordenskjold here.

And just like Tomatmad, Tordenskjold begins with the letter T. That is all the commonality I need to draw comparisons! While I'm on the topic of T, here are a few other very cool Danish things that start with the magnificent 15th letter of the alphabet.

Tivoli. Tivoli Gardens is the original fairytale kingdom - sitting right in the heart of Copenhagen. Opened in 1843, Tivoli was to the 19th century what "Disneyland" or "6 Flags Great America" are to the 21st. As a child, I loved going to Tivoli, mainly for the food - fanciful smørrebrød (stjerneskyd was my favorite - I'll have to post about that one soon!!!) and incomparably ornate ice cream cones topped with flødeboller and other Danish candy delights! Check out Tivoli's website here.